US areas with highest heart death rates have shifted from north east to south

Although heart disease death rates in the United States have markedly declined overall during the past four decades, rates have fallen faster in the north than in the south, a study by researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found.1

The CDC researchers analyzed death records at the county level in the 48 contiguous states from 1973 to 2010. They found that in the 1970s the largest concentrations of counties with high death rates from heart …